{"id":728103,"date":"2026-06-10T19:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/728103\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:14:13","slug":"red-bull-was-left-surprised-by-antonellis-pace-en-route-to-monaco-gp-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/728103\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull was left “surprised” by Antonelli’s pace en route to Monaco GP win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kimi Antonelli<\/a> set a record as the youngest grand slam winner in Formula 1 history when he dominated the Monaco Grand Prix, and Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies admits that his \u201cserious pace\u201d came as a surprise to many onlookers.<\/p>\n

The Mercedes<\/a> teenager put his Mercedes on pole position in the principality ahead of the Red Bull of\u00a0Max Verstappen<\/a>. However, the Dutchman spluttered off the line on Sunday with engine issues and retired from the race. From then on, Antonelli faced little challenge up front and romped to his fifth consecutive victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cKimi disappeared,\u201d said Mekies, when asked about the Mercedes driver\u2019s performance. \u201cCredit to Kimi, I think he surprised all of us by being that fast around here on his second year only.<\/p>\n

“I think he showed today that what he had done yesterday [in qualifying] was not one magical lap but that he had a very serious pace. Whether or not Max would have been able to challenge that pace, again we will never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstappen put up a strong fight in Monaco on Saturday. While Antonelli beat him to pole position by just 0.043s around the street circuit, the four-time world champion had lapped quicker than him in the first two qualifying sessions.<\/p>\n

The team \u201cfound the optimum\u201d for Verstappen on Saturday, but was unable to transfer that over to Sunday as the engine issue struck\u00a0before his race had really begun.<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Erik Junius<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, the level at which Max has been running in qualifying, not just one lap, you know Q2, the two attempts of Q3 was very impressive,\u201d Mekies added. \u201cWe know that every time you manage to get Max comfortable with the car you get that extra Max effect so I would have liked to see what he would have done in the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstappen acknowledged that it had been \u201ca really good weekend up until the race”, but conceded that he had been \u201cdisappointed not to be on the podium\u201d come Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to make sure that of course we finish the races,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we first need to understand what went wrong today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of what actually did go wrong, Mekies said the team has identified what the issue was and admitted that it \u201cgave him no chance\u201d to compete for the podium.<\/p>\n

“It is an engine issue,\u201d he explained. “Obviously, we can only apologise to Max because the job he had done with the team to get to that level of pace around Monaco was outstanding. Probably early days to discuss what the fix is, but we think we have identified what the issue is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Ben Vinel<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli set a record as the youngest grand slam winner in Formula 1 history when he dominated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3032,49,48,255891,578,576,577,1881,249565,2190,262549,82],"class_list":["post-728103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-circuit-de-monaco","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mercedes","tag-monaco-gp","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-red-bull-was-left-surprised-by-antonellis-pace-en-route-to-monaco-gp-win","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}